The Reshoring Initiative tracks data on the reshoring trend by the following means.

Data is extracted primarily from published articles on the subject of reshoring, which we break down into three categories: reshoring; new foreign direct investment (FDI); and kept from offshoring (KFO). The common denominator is that the company specifically chooses to produce in the US over other offshore options. We do not include in our data increases in US manufacturing due to market expansion.

Most publications are available online and are found via automated Google search using the following terms and phrases: reshoring, re-shoring, onshoring, backshoring, near-shoring, new US manufacturing, manufacturing returning to the US, and foreign direct investment.

Additionally, we occasionally acquire data from primary sources via conversation, interviews, or print only material. These data are recorded in the database as “primary source material” with name of source cited.

All source material is entered into the Reshoring Initiative Library. Our “librarians” or data entry team extract whatever data is available and enter it into the 32 data fields, including, for example: company, industry, location to and from, reasons for reshoring, etc.

On a quarterly basis, we extract the data to excel format and merge, compare and clean multiple data sources to create up-to-date data on each company, resulting in our Master Data file. We then analyze the Master Data to create our tables, lists and graphs, and the Library Data, which is made available to the public via our data reports. Data points are also available through the Advanced Search option on our website, ReshorNow.org.